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Are WAV files supported?

Hello,
I just started playing around with ReadyDLNA. My music library is mostly WAV with only a few AAC files purchased through iTunes. To test the DLNA server I use MLPlayer on my iPod Touch. It does see my ReadyNAS NVX DLNA server and it can connect to it. Trouble is that I don’t see any of my WAV files when I navigate to Album, Artist or Genre. The few AAC files are visible in those folders.
Does minidlna support WAV files and metadata in WAV files? My WAV files are tagged with INFO chunks.

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No, we don't support parsing INFO chunks in WAV files today. There seems to be no official standard for WAV file tags, so it implementations seem to vary. I just checked in code that can parse the tags that Audacity appears to write out, but I can't guarantee that it will work with files output by any other programs.

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WAV does have an official tagging method. WAV files are built using RIFF chuncks. There is a well know RIFF chunk called LIST witch is a part of the official standard (the same is used for AVI files). The LIST chunk with a header id called INFO has several frames to store song information; a couple of examples are:
IART Artist
ICRD Creation Date
IGNR Genre
INAM Name (Title)
IPRD Product (Album)
The above frames are only a fraction of the available LIST INFO frames.

There are several rippers out there who write LIST chuncks into WAV files: example: MediaMonkey, Dbpoweramp. Sonos supports LIST chunks in WAV files.

Apart from the official LIST chucks to store metadata in WAV files it is possible to use virtualy any tagging method as long as the RIFF file specification is respected. There are several rippers and application who use the ID3 tagging format in WAV files. Tag&Rename and AudioGrabber are two examples. The difference here is that these applications use different chunk ID’s but that is very minor. T&R uses ‘id3 ‘ and Audiograbber uses ‘ID32’. Denon DJ has adopted the Audiograbber chunk ID. Logitech Squeezebox supports both chunk ID’s.

I would love to see that minidlna adopts at least the standard (LIST chunks). The implementation is very simple and I can supply you with sample WAV files containing both tagging methods (LIST chunks and ID3).

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Right, I'm totally aware that people tag WAV files. But different programs do it differently, which can add some confusion. Anyway, like I mentioned before, I did check in code that can parse RIFF LIST INFO chunks as Audacity writes them out. If you'd like to try it out, you can either build from source, or if you'd prefer a ReadyNAS addon, I can build you one.

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I didn’t know that Audacity is able to write LIST chunks. With what version are you testing that?

If Audacity writes LIST chunks then there is very high chance that this is the solution. LIST chunks are part of the RIFF standard used by the WAV format.
I would like to test it with a ReadyNAS build (if you don’t mind).

Thank you.

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I installed the add-on provided in the link above and tested it.
There is no change in behaviour, my WAV files do not appear under artist, album or genre.

I have also tested the beta version of Audacity. The current beta version does not support a lot of LIST INFO sub chunks. Important things such as track number, album and genre are not supported which makes tagging pretty useless.

Audacity writes the ‘LIST’ chunk before the ‘data’ chunk in the WAV file. That means it is sitting in the beginning of the WAV file. I guess this is the reason why my WAV files do not show up. In my WAV files the ‘LIST’ chunk resides after the ‘data’ chunk. The metadata is sitting at the end of the WAV file which makes a lot more sense. If a user wants to modify their tags, the application does not have to rewrite the complete WAV file. This greatly improves performance.

So, for the obvious questions:

1. Can you add support for the following:
IART (Artist)
IGNR (Genre) – currently not supported by Audacity
INAM (Title)
IPRD (Album) – currently not supported by Audacity
itrk (Track Number) – currently not supported by Audacity

The above list is the minimum requirement for decent music management. And since the code already knows how to decode other frames (such as IART) this modification is very simple.

2. Can you modify your code to look for the LIST chunk at the bottom of the file if it isn’t present at the top of the file? That would provide a lot better metadata support in WAV files.

Thank you.

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I found one other issue which I’m sure will be easy to fix. In the current version ReadyDLNA doesn’t decode the track numbers. I think the reason is that the code is looking for ITRK instead of itrk (lowercase). I have never seen implementation where the uppercase was used but maybe the code can look for both cases?

Thank you.

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I use a minDLNA 1.0.25-2 on arch linux arm platform. I find an issue while miniDLNA tries to stream WAV file. When I use Windows 7 media player to play a WAV file on the miniDLNA server, it will works well. However if I use the play to feature to send the WAV file to another Windows 7 media player, it general won't work. I notice there is a message on on media player says the media format is not supported on miniDLNA.

The same problem happens if I use 8player lite in iPhone to stream WAV to iPhone, it works well. However when I try to stream the WAV to a Windows 7 media player, the file disappear.

This confuses me a little. If miniDLNA supports WAV format, where is the media format not support message comes from. If miniDLNA doesn't support WAV formart, why media player and 8player both receive the streaming well.

This confuses me a little. Is it possible that miniDLNA just falsely report that the file format is not supported? Or DLNA players handle the tag stripping, however they don't know a DLNA renderer can handle the stripping or not while acting as DLNA controllers, so they just can not issue the stream command?

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Or, setup an ITUNES server - I think I saw on my WD NAS an iTunes option (which I turned off, as well as the crappy version of Twonky, in favor of minidlna) OH... wait, nevermind... unless your TV can install some kind of ITUNES app...

Looks like you might be stuck converting all your .wav files to mutually supported formats - which you'll of course want to remember as your recipe for future rips. Minidlna "does" support WAV, as shown on their website... so there must be a specific thing it needs in order to "see" the files.

This forum is not very active. I wonder if there might be more action at the NetGear site... ReadyNAS is their product that is using the renamed minidlna/ReadyMedia.

Good luck!!

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Thanks for the help...yeah this is not really a big deal all my other music is compatible...I just got this new CD and wanted to try uncompressed.

I don't really listen to music using the TV anyway...just that my best speakers are hooked up to it and dlna was the best way to get it there uncompressed without copying to usb stick. I found I can just browse minidlna server using the folder option and I'm able to play the WAV....just that it is hidden in library view.

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